THEATER REVIEW

By BEN BRANTLEY

Published: December 16, 2003

Time stands still for no clown. Or so it would seem from the second half of the delightful ''Regard Evening,'' which opened last night at the Peter Norton Space of the Signature Theater Company. In Act II middle age lands like an anvil upon poor Bill Irwin. His back is stiff, his steps are cautious, and he is slow to pick up on his cues. This is a man, after all, who is glimpsed dozing in bed with a copy of a book called ''Social Security and You.''

Which would be a sobering spectacle if you hadn't seen Mr. Irwin before the intermission, when he sprang, slithered, bent and undulated all over the place, a human hybrid of Gumby and a Slinky toy. No matter what geriatric mannerisms he assumes later, this is one old fool who can still deliver the antic goods as he did 20 years ago.

It was in 1982 to be exact that a short, breathtaking theatrical piece called ''The Regard of Flight'' confirmed Mr. Irwin's rising reputation as a champ among physical comedians. His performance inspired raptures from the likes of Walter Kerr, a specialist in the silent film clowns Mr. Irwin was emulating. And writing in The New York Times Mel Gussow described the show's star as a creature who ''defies gravity in both senses of the word.''

Now, as part of a season devoted to Mr. Irwin's work, the Signature Theater Company has invited him and his original comic accomplices, Doug Skinner and Michael O'Connor, to reprise the show and to add a postscript that regards ''Regard'' with the hindsight of two decades. (''The Regard Evening'' was created by Mr. Irwin in collaboration with Mr. Skinner, Mr. O'Connor and Nancy Harrington.)

If concessions have been made to the actor's more brittle bones, they're not obvious. Mr. Irwin is still risking limbs, if not life, to remind audiences of how that maddening thing known as daily existence is always tripping you up.

Now as then ''The Regard of Flight'' is an unusually verbal work for Mr. Irwin, best known to Broadway theatergoers for ''Fool Moon,'' his contemporary commedia dell'arte-style collaboration with David Shiner.

Though he is famous for letting his body do most of the talking for him, Mr. Irwin speaks a lot with his mouth in this production, which considers the plight of the comic actor in a theater in artistic upheaval.

In the early 1980's it was the academic self-consciousness of the avant-garde that Mr. Irwin's onstage alter ego was responding to. This still means that he is obliged to step up to a lectern from time to time to speak of things like ''the purity we seek in a new theater.'' A combative critic (played by Mr. O'Connor) bombards him with adversarial questions. And Mr. Skinner, the show's blissfully deadpan musical director, intones ominous stage directions as well as doing uncanny things with a keyboard, ukulele and ventriloquist's dummy.

But, as the current performance reminds you, the greatest joy of ''The Regard of Flight'' lies in something more classic: the sense of life as an endlessly frustrating enterprise that doesn't stop even when you're asleep. The curtain rises on Mr. Irwin in bed, in riotously striped pajamas. (The sensibly silly costumes are by Catherine Zuber.) And how he conveys uneasy dreams by adjusting his head on a pillow is worth a review in itself.

What follows assumes the frighteningly familiar aspect of a nightmare of humiliation, the kind in which you're on a stage, inappropriately dressed and unsure of what's expected of you. So there is Mr. Irwin at war with not only that cantankerous critic but also the stage itself, as its curtains devour him and its frame blocks his escape.

At one point he finds himself poised over the upper tiers of the audience, arms spread and ready to fly; at another he discovers a gun in his hand, which he uses to disastrous effect. If this were your dream, you would want to wake up fast. But since it is Mr. Irwin's, you never want it to end.

The show's second act finds Mr. Irwin in bed again, 21 years later, and life is even more complicated. Douglas Stein's witty set is more crowded with furniture and harder to navigate. Getting into the bathroom requires a trampoline, since its door appears to be at least six feet above stage level. And the talk is of computers and Web sites and files with names like ''virtual hat moves.''

Though there is one inspired bit involving a computer monitor and an effigy of Mr. Irwin, technology does not show him off to his best advantage. Nor does intellectual dialogue about criticism and artistic appropriation. It's not that the talk isn't intelligent. But Mr. Irwin says so much more when he's not talking.

Fortunately, even in the show's second half there are plenty of tasty samples of this wordless eloquence. In the first act Mr. Irwin speaks of doing ''without the baggage of the old theater'' but finds he just can't discard things like a top hat with a white rabbit inside.

When the curtain rises on the second act, a whole wall of trunks and suitcases towers over Mr. Irwin's bed. Contrary to the advice of self-help books, he just hasn't been able to get rid of the baggage of his earlier life. And aren't we lucky that he can't?